Walter Sutton

After studying at the University of Kansas, Sutton undertook zoological research with Edmund Beecher Wilson at Columbia. He used grasshopper cells to follow chromosomes during the formation of reproductive cells. Distinguishable chromosomes allowed him to investigate how paired structures separated as gametes formed.

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Sutton’s 1902 paper described chromosome differences and the reduction in chromosome number during gamete formation. In The Chromosomes in Heredity, published in 1903, he developed the connection with Mendelian laws. Inheritance could be investigated through cellular events as well as numerical patterns among offspring.

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Theodor Boveri also investigated the hereditary roles of chromosomes through fertilization and embryonic-development experiments. Sutton developed his interpretation independently in Wilson’s laboratory. These different lines of work became important foundations of the chromosomal theory of inheritance.

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Sutton left zoological research without completing a doctorate, entered medical training and became a surgeon. He died in 1916 at the age of 39. His cytological work occupied a brief early period but left an explicit argument connecting Mendelian inheritance with chromosomes.

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